Here are some sites that have products from methanol distillation

http://www.uhde.eu/cgi-bin/byteserver.pl/archive/upload/uhde_brochures_pdf_en_6.00.pdf

The figure on page 25 shows different types of catalysts and what by-products would be created along with the crude methanol. We need to figure out what catalyst we will actually use to know what by-products we are going to have to account for.
It seems from research that we need to create grade AA methanol, which is sold as chemical grade methanol and not for fuel production.


http://books.google.com/books?id=G5jl6rs21ZsC&pg=PA237&lpg=PA237&dq=by-products+from+ICI+synetix+reactor&source=bl&ots=rHT94nJ1ci&sig=ZOXJn3PSuoU75HZPHDRK1yqfFRY&hl=en&ei=KXxPTZ6ZBMLFgAfHkvQJ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

This book seems to have necessary information about methanol production from syngas. I will try to get it if the library has is, or find a full pdf form of it online.

http://maecourses.ucsd.edu/ceng124/rpts/gp6_final.pdf
-This group's project says that we will need distillation columns in series in order to remove the high-end by-products, "Distillation columns in series are utilized for the separation of undesirable contaminants from the methanol product stream. As these include high and low volatility components, two such columns are used. The first has low specificity and removes the more volatile gaseous contaminants, which are recycled to the methanol reactors. The
second column has a higher specificity, owing to the need to separate ethanol and water from the product stream."
-It also seems that we would be able to recover some of the light end hyrdocarbons and mix them with the syngas to go through the reactors and distillation columns again to increase efficiency.
useful book

Methanol synthesis technology

By Sunggyu Lee

In order to go any further in our project it seems like we need to run Aspen simulations to see what is needed in order to obtain the correct yield of methanol in the final product stream